Book Review: Eric Weiner's 'The Geography of Genius'
It's popular history at this point, but back in the early 1970s Seattle was the Detroit of today. A dying city increasingly bereft of the manufacturing jobs that once animated its economy, a billboard was eventually put up near the city's airport asking the last one leaving to turn out the lights.
But then two Seattle natives returned. Having started what was then called Micro-Soft in Albuquerque, Bill Gates and Paul Allen brought their creation back to the Emerald City. A place that had been given up for dead was soon enough one of the most economically advanced cities in the United States. Once a talent-repellent, Seattle became a magnet for the commercially creative (think Jeff Bezos, Amazon) along with those who were testing new ideas musically (Nirvana, Pearl Jam). Genius is a lure for genius.
It was Seattle's transformation by two individuals, what Canadian economist Reuven Brenner refers to as the "vital few," that had me very excited to read Eric Weiner's new book, The Geography of Genius. The expectation was that he would tell exciting stories somewhat like the one that took place in a once-depressed Seattle. Unfortunately, Weiner's history disappoints. Maybe it was all about incorrect expectations, but a book full of anecdotes, uncritical thinking, and vague conclusions left me limp. In possession of a great idea, Weiner's collection of thoughts doesn't quite measure up to his presumed goal: explaining the why behind human flourishing in cities and locales such as Athens, Vienna, and Silicon Valley.
Weiner is no doubt correct that we modernly suffer "from a serious case of genius inflation." Seemingly so many nowadays are brilliant, iconic, and all sorts of other admiring adjectives. Weiner's own definition of "genius" is "in the creative sense - as the highest form of creativity," or someone "who makes an intellectual or artistic leap." Seemingly Gates, Allen and Bezos would qualify considering the commercial advances they oversaw, but Weiner wasn't exactly eager to give the achievers of the technological variety their due.
Presumably one of Weiner's reasons for not applying genius to Silicon Valley is revealed in his chapter on Athens. While very appreciative of the Greeks (Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, etc.), Weiner notes that Athens' thinkers in a broad sense were "tremendous moochers" who "stole" ideas. But this is a popular modern mode of thought that Weiner could have easily dismissed through a careful analysis of Silicon Valley itself. Gates and Steve Jobs were said to have "stolen" ideas from Xerox long ago. But could he or most anyone in his high-demographic orbit walk into Google's R&D department or Amazon's Lab126 and "steal" ideas? Odds are that only a microscopic fraction of a fraction of the world's population would have a clue about what to take from the labs of technology companies, let alone what to do with those ideas once lifted. All that, plus let's not forget that the technology world's story is one built on near constant failure. To "mooch" ideas would be for even the brightest of technological minds to take ideas set to implode once put into operation. Was it any different thousands of years ago? Of course, in a book that was seemingly arguing with itself the majority of the time, later on Weiner acknowledges that great thinkers tend to "stand on the shoulders" of giant thinkers who came before them; mooching in a sense. If you don't like one of Weiner's conclusions, fear not, he'll conclude the opposite soon enough.
One of Weiner's odd contentions about the source of Athens' genius was that everyone was equal. There were no stars as it were, hence Weiner's assertion that "Should a Silicon Valley technokind suddenly materialize in ancient Athens, he would be treated like any other craftsman, with a puny salary, no recognition, and, when his back was turned, a derisive sneer." A snippy statement for sure, but then as evidenced by Weiner's research that revealed Socrates et al as heroic, there quite simply was grand recognition for Athens' best thinkers. Furthermore, we're talking about a highly primitive commercial economy when we discuss ancient Greece. What would a large salary have won for even the wealthiest so long ago?
Most incomplete of all about the Athens chapter is Weiner's almost vague reference to the happy truth that ancient Athens "embraced not only foreign goods and ideas. It also welcomed foreigners themselves." These guest workers, "resident aliens," or "metics" (in Greek lingo) were free to live and work there as books by Alfred Zimmern (The Greek Commonwealth) and Will Durant (The Life of Greece) have made plain. It's fair to say that this was the big story of Athens' genius. Not a race, the city-state was a collection of talented people from all over in pursuit of the freedom to flourish. That's not the case today. As Weiner writes, modern Greece "has extremely tight border controls. It doesn't take kindly to interlopers such as me." Simply stated, locales open to outsiders regardless of race or religion (think Amsterdam in the 17th century) have a tendency to prosper thanks to the influx of great minds in search of opportunity. Weiner gets that wealth and freedom matter, but spends much of the chapter not providing any powerful reasons for the renaissance in Athens. It was arguably staring him in the face.
Always asking why certain places flourished, Weiner rarely provides concrete answers. One possibility for why has to do with his frequent elevation of nurture (culture) combined with a dismissal of nature (genes) when trying to explain genius. Armed with a backwards conclusion at the outset, the author wasn't ever able to recover on the way to providing an interesting history. Mainly he offered platitudes along the lines of "If it takes a village to raise a child, as the African proverb goes, it takes a city to raise a genius." Apparently Einstein, Bezos and Jobs would have been sub-genius if they'd grown up in Pine Bluff, AR.
Yet if he wanted an explanation for genius being driven to some degree by environmental factors, China's Hangzhou (one of the world's most advanced cities - wealth, sanitation, education, literacy - in the 13th century) might have been an interesting place to make such a case simply because of its broad openness to trade. There "you could buy anything; rhinoceros horns from India, ivory from Africa..." The beauty of free trade is that the individuals who comprise an economy can do the work that most matches their skills, only to exchange the fruits of their labor for the goods they're least capable of producing. Open trade is easily the best way to mitigate a lack of talent for it allowing individuals to focus on what amplifies their talents. Trade is the biggest exposer of genius, while closed borders to goods are most liable to obscure same. Would we have ever heard of Plato, Michelangelo and Jobs if the need to merely survive had forced them into farm work? But Weiner didn't spend much time on the possible relationship between Hangzhou's genius and its openness to the world's plenty, and how it magnified the skills of those within the city.
Instead, he made declarative statements that can't be proven, and that are arguably untrue as is. One of those was that "creative people clearly derive inspiration from nature," only to cite New York City's Central Park as an example. Really? Did the world's most interesting and talented reach New York a little bit dull only to have their creative juices boosted by Strawberry Fields? Earlier in the book he draws an alleged link between walking and creativity. This will surely interest a large moviemaking population based in Los Angeles where driving is generally the rule.
Weiner attributes an apparent lack of modern Chinese creativity (little mention is given to Mao's murderous regime in which tens of millions were exterminated as a possible reason for it being in catch-up mode) to a culture that doesn't prize individuality. He cites a Chinese expression which says "The first bird to fly is the one who gets shot," but in a book that regularly contradicts itself, in the very same chapter he mentions an interview with Hangzhou's own Jack Ma, the rather creative founder of Alibaba. His meeting with Ma naturally piqued this reviewer's interest, only for Weiner to not spend much time on him.
Instead, Weiner substituted his own thoughts for Ma's. As he sees it, maybe China's creativity is simply very deliberate compared to U.S. creativity that he deems somewhat hyped. As he puts it, American creativity is really more of a marketing concept whereby stodgy U.S. corporations make "even the most minor tweaks appear revolutionary." It's a nice thought, but wholly untrue. If it were all about marketing, then it's certainly true that advertising and PR would be the last to feel U.S. downturns, when in fact it's well known that they're always the first. After that, and if it's all about hype, what's Weiner's explanation for the failed launches of Amazon's mobile phone, Microsoft's Zune, Ford's Edsel, and Coca-Cola's "New Coke"?
In his discussion of Florence, the contradictions and odd assertions really pick up steam. While Weiner acknowledges the importance of wealthy patrons (lest we forget, Silicon Valley's early VC money was largely inherited wealth of the Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Phipps variety), he asserts that absent a Medici (a very rich banking family that prospered amid Florence's renaissance that it funded) randomly noticing and correcting an obvious mistake on a piece of art crafted by Michelangelo, "we would not know the name Michelangelo." Yet in the very next paragraph Weiner asserts that "What we do know is that the geniuses of Florence did not appear by accident."
About the act of taking risks in once thriving Florence, on p. 135 Weiner quotes an interviewee who told him "you could starve to death if you failed," and that there was no bankruptcy to fall back on. Failure back then could destroy "your family for generations." But three pages later he writes that the basis of the city's genius backed by wealthy patrons was that "wealth gives you the chance to fail. Wealth gives you do-overs."
When he wasn't contradicting himself, Weiner was plain wrong. Describing the ways modern participants in commerce do things today, he writes that "We treat risk not as a noble venture, a dance with the universe, but as something to be avoided at all costs, or at least reduced to a decimal point." This bit of absurdity might this time interest venture capitalists in Silicon Valley who invest in countless failures in the hope that just one start-up success erases all the other proverbial dry holes.
Maybe most frustrating of all was how uncritical Weiner's analysis of seemingly everything was. At one point he cites a poll of Nobel Laureates who attributed their success to great "mentors," and then later on in the book another poll in which another set of Nobels tied their achievement to "being in the right place at the right time." So that's all it is? Implicit in his worldview is that we really are just a bunch of blank slates waiting to be molded in the right place? No heredity? Maybe, maybe not. Just turn the page and you'll find a different answer. Indeed, at one point Weiner acknowledges that "the vast majority of geniuses have come from the middle and upper middle classes." Were these individuals blank slates too, or is it possible that smart, successful people tend to have smart kids? Considering China's beautiful rise from murderous destitution, a look at Shanghai in 1978 versus today would strike some as "genius." What in the country's once tragic environment molded this brilliant transformation?
Perhaps most horrid of all is Weiner's contention that the Black Death that killed off many Florence inhabitants had a positive side effect for the devastating plague helping to author the city's eventual renaissance. He adds that Athens' golden age would not "have happened had the Persians not first sacked Athens, burning it to the ground, and clearing the way for Pericles''s ambitious rebuilding." Oh yes, we've heard something like this before. Supposedly all the killing during World War II saved the U.S. economy. A more absurd, dangerous and sickening point-of-view would be hard to find, but Weiner promotes it. Applied to Florence, supposedly all the dying freed up inheritances to fund intellectual advancement. No mention of all the wealth and advances that never saw the light of day thanks to so many lives ending prematurely. The life that is the tautological basis for genius apparently needs to be snuffed out for genius to reveal itself... With the U.S. economy presently a bit weak, maybe we ought to dynamite a few American cities to revive them, and maybe find a few more wars to fight so that more of our best and brightest can be maimed and murdered. Let's do it to promote "genius."
Despite analysis that left a great deal to be desired, Weiner occasionally makes it fun for the reader. Describing the chaos that is Calcutta (it had a minor renaissance from 1840-1920), he talks about the struggling city's "lovable ugliness." It's also revealed that Beethoven (Vienna) was an amazing slob, yet in his chapters on Vienna he never sees fit to feature Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek despite their profound influence to this day on economic thought. Though he mentions "disruption" a few times in the book, another individual who thrived in Vienna (Joseph Schumpeter) similarly rates no mention.
The Austrian School economists listed were all academics, so this may explain why he didn't talk about them? In his chapter on Florence, Weiner correctly pointed out that education isn't as important as some assume. Figure Florence's flowering took place despite it not having a "decent university." Yet even there he contradicts himself. Desperate in his belief that geniuses aren't born as much as they're created, it was surprising that he would acknowledge how little education matters. That it doesn't supports the nature point of view, but Weiner says "we know [genius] is not genetic."
Weiner concludes with a chapter on Silicon Valley only to strangely offer an either/or as to whether its innovations qualify as genius. Worse, in trying to explain its prosperity he brought up banal theories such as the Valley might have a chip on its shoulder rooted in early east coast disdain for Stanford. He also cited "buckets of government money" as a source of its economic vitality without talking about why those same buckets of taxpayer funds didn't eventuate a similar boom in West Virginia. What about southern California? It too was the alleged beneficiary of heavy government spending, it has prominent universities popular with the technology focused like Caltech, but no one's mistaking Pasadena's economy for Palo Alto's.
What's most difficult to wrap one's hands around is Weiner's persistent contention that genes aren't terribly relevant as the source of intelligence. In discussing Vienna, he does, however, write that while "Jews constituted only 10 percent of Vienna's population, they accounted for more than half of its doctors and lawyers, and nearly two-thirds of its journalists, as well as a disproportionately high number of the city's creative geniuses." Writing in Commentary back in 2007, Charles Murray noted that despite Jewish people only comprising two-tenths of one percent of the world's population, individuals of Jewish descent claimed 29 percent of the Nobel Prizes awarded during the second half of the 20th century.
What the above stats tell us fairly clearly is that Weiner's dismissal of genes in his attempt to explain genius amounts to willful blindness. If it were truly all about culture, then parents the world over would spend years observing the Jewish culture before having kids. Some would beg Jewish families to adopt their kids. Can Weiner really be so dismissive of statistics unearthed not just by Murray, but from his own studies? Apparently so.
Unfortunately, the evidence-free dismissal of genes is but one of many reasons why it's hard to recommend The Geography of Genius. Weiner is a talented writer, but he let his deeply held views get in the way of actually finding answers to the why behind genius, and why smart people cluster. At one point he happened on the best answer ("Great minds don't necessarily think alike, but they do gravitate to one another") to the latter only to quickly move on to anecdotes and "aha" discoveries that could only impress those closest to him. Very disappointing in light of the excitement that came with ordering Weiner's book is that the best and most alluring part of The Geography of Genius is its title.
